Graphics programming is only for the uber elite. You are screwed. :rolleyes:

I come here for input from other programmers who might have tried some of these programs.

And I'm not screwed for being curious. I hope your ego got a satisfying stroke from that.

01-18-2006

suzakugaiden

Yeah, seriously. I was under the impression that this was a forum for help and discussion and feedback, not... your own personal playground for proving how much of a M4star programmerz you are, Bubba. Everybody has to start somewhere, and googling for "graphical game programming" is going to give you a lot of information, and if you've little experience with the subject, you're going to have a hard to finding out what IS relevant and what isn't.

Anyway, topic starter, I'll get off of my soapbox ^^. SDL is pretty simple. apparently it has a limited scope, but it's not too difficult if you can except a few things as black boxes. http://www.libsdl.org/index.php has some tutorials which you might check out.

01-19-2006

Salem

Probably because the board is knee-deep in noob "where do I start" threads which have been answered many times before.

Probably because there are sticky threads at the top of the forum which have lots of useful basic information which needs to be read first.

Probably because having seen most peoples attempts at writing a game, they should actually go back and learn the language properly before trying anything serious. One recent example was a 100K source file consisting entirely of cin and cout.

01-19-2006

kungtotte

Right, I am a relative programming noob. I know my way around C and C++ but that's about it.

The difference between me and the other noobs on these boards is that I know my limitations. I haven't the first clue when it comes to GUIs (I.E win32api GUI, wxWidgets, GTK, QT or other toolkits) and even less so when it comes to 'real' graphics APIs like DirectX and OpenGL (SDL is an OpenGL wrapper if I recall correctly).

If and when I do decide to start with either of these technologies, I'm not going to come on these boards and ask silly questions like "What do I use?", "Where do I start with graphics programming?" and "Help me with <Insert your technique here>!".

I'm going to decide what to use, all by myself, then I'm going to read the available documentation for that (found through google) and if I don't understand or if I have problems with specific parts, I will ask a specific question on these boards.

I will supply what I do know, what code I have currently and explain what steps I have taken to correct or understand the problem at hand.

And we will answer questions like Help me with <insert_technique> if you obviously are just stuck on a portion of it and we understand what you are doing.

Take a look at some of the other posts on this board and I'm sure you will see that we help a lot of people and have very good discussions on a lot of topics. None of us here are uber elite and I'm not quite sure why most of you are looking at us like we are uber god-like coders because we are not. Those of us who really do implement algos, graphics, and maybe even a game or two realize that it is impossible to tell someone where to start or what to read in one thread. Besides the minute we do that someone the very next day will come and ask the same stupid question. So sorry that all of you feel we should auto-regurgitate 100 post threads simply to help the lazy and the helpless but most of us here feel we are not obligated to do that.

kungtotte hit the nail right on the head.
It pretty much follows this line of thinking:

Ask a stupid question and you will get a stupid answer.

Here is a stupid question:
Can you tell me how to program <X>?

Here is why:
1. It is not our responsibility to teach you how to implement your application.
2. It shows a lot of laziness on the part of the OP especially since there are oodles and oodles of books, internet sites, and tutorials on the internet.
3. It's obvious that there is probably more than one way to program X, so wasting thread space by showing one possible way is a waste of people's time.
4. The cprogramming board is not about having other people do your work for you, it's about information sharing. So if you do not have much information, then you probably don't have much to share eh?
5. The first way to program X is to learn the language. There is no magic pill that causes you to learn C/C++ overnight.
6. There is a games FAQ totally dedicated to resources as well as a FAQ totally dedicated to providing you with resources and yet no one seems to even use it.
7. There are very good tutorials on our home page written by board members which explain matrices and some 3D math using OpenGL.
8. Asking where to begin graphically is not a valid question because you can pick up every graphical app/game on the shelf and somewhere it says something about OpenGL or DirectX/Direct3D. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that those APIs just might be what you want to use.
9. Most of us who have been here for a long time have answered questions like these out of the goodness of our hearts, only to have found it did not help the OP, caused a flame war, and/or cause some other ludicrous disrespectful remark. We do not want to visit that again and so we answer tersely.
10. If the OP does not have time to do more research and ask better questions then why should we waste time doing it for him/her?

And above all to find more sites on topics learn to use www.google.com. Usually searching for DirectX tutorials, game programming tutorials, or OpenGL tutorials helps a lot.
And NO, all the information in tutorials is not outdated. But even if it is welcome to game programming where technology changes fast and sure. If you are not ready for this then please don't get into it. Sometimes you are forced to re-learn an API or this or that to keep up with technology.

You never reach the point where you have learned everything and can just sit back, be lazy, and never learn anything new. Game programming is a constant state of frustration and learning.
Game programming is about attempting to implement something that either has not been done before or has and hasn't been documented or is copyrighted or the way it was simply doesn't fit into your engine. You gotta make it work and no one on the internet is more dedicated to making your game than you - so for God's sake do yourself a favor and research the hell out of it.

Look at the terrain screenshot and discussion thread and that is an example of a very good post with very good discussion. Hell I
ve bumped this thing just to keep it up there because it is very good information and because the topic is so vast. Perspective, Mr. Wizard, and Darkness have all provided invaluable insight into an engine of this sort. Why are we discussing it? Because we don't know how to do it and we want to learn. But notice we are all on the same page and all pretty much have tried other approaches and so we have a solid foundation built so that we can share ideas and possibly suggest alternative approaches.
This is the cprogramming board in a nutshell. For very good threads like this one, visit the FAQ board. We also have very good tutorials written about C/C++ which have helped a lot of people.

If you cannot figure out how to point and click and read then most of us feel that you are beyond help.

So lay off.

01-19-2006

VirtualAce

To say that only arrogant uppity super uber coders reside here is a slap in the face to the webmaster. Do you pay for this board? Have you invested anything but complaints, laziness, and a total lack of disrespect on this board? Many of us have posted thousands and thousands of lines of source just to help people and yet you rude arrogant noobies come in and act like you deserve doled out answers and code. That is extremely arrogant in any society be it at work or an an internet forum. So learn some respect and perhaps you might gain some.

This board has some of the most intelligent people I've ever talked to and through all of the stupid posts, flame wars about this or that, and just bickering in general I've enjoyed nearly every minute of my time spent on this board. We love to help people who help themselves. Don't flame the board with your big 76 post count or your 150 post count when you haven't even been here long enough to know what this is all about. It really is about respect. Post counts don't matter if you demonstrate that you are a respectful mature person instead of a whiny immature brat that must have his/her way. Even if you do get 1000 or so posts and you still act like a brat, you will be treated like one.

So it is you who are rude, not us.

01-19-2006

loopshot

I am going to have to agree, you need to do some more research on your own but i am not going to go to the all out extream and go crazy on you becouse graphics programming can be very confusing and most of the info that will come up will probably be on way to complicated stuff for you, so i am going to give you some small clues. You need a little Win32 API and look up stuff on sprites.

01-21-2006

chrismax2

I don't think most on here are c++ gods, I donít think the C++ gods go to places like this, cause they don't have time. However I notice the more experience programmers on here are rather rude to the new be's and I been looking silently off and on this board for years.

Perhaps if these new be's (I don't use the word noob, it's too easy to pronounce it as something else if your english) or students are annoying you more experience programmers, then you should have a separate new be page which you can all avoid and just let the new be's help each other instead?

01-21-2006

loopshot

We would not be reacting in this way becouse we usually have a small constant stream of these people but this is like the 5th person in 3 days and it is driving us crazy

01-22-2006

Salem

Too many whiny noobs trying to convince far too few regulars that they somehow deserve special treatment and lots of unpaid one-to-one support.